Understanding the world. Cultivating judgement.
Eudaimonia, often translated as happiness or flourishing, is not simply a pleasant feeling. In Nicomachean Ethics, it concerns activity in accordance with excellence across a life. External conditions matter too: virtue does not magically turn every circumstance into a happy existence.
Rather than asking only whether a day was pleasant, ask which human capacities you actually exercised and under what conditions.
Character develops through repeated actions, but virtue is not the mechanical following of a routine. It involves choosing for good reasons. The mean is relative to the situation and the agent: it is neither an arithmetic average nor a compromise valid for every kind of conduct.
Courage does not always lie halfway between staying and leaving. You must consider the danger, the aim and what the situation calls for.
Phronesis is the capacity to deliberate well about action. It is not merely technical expertise or the application of a formula. It requires understanding particular circumstances in light of an account of a good life, bringing experience, desire and judgement together.
A rule of honesty cannot by itself tell you how to deliver difficult news. Timing, words and attention to the other person belong to judgement.
The four causes distinguish different answers to “why?”: what something is made of, the form it has, what produces it and the end towards which it exists or acts. They do not all match the modern sense of mechanical causation, and their relevance must be assessed for different objects.
To understand a house, you might consider its materials, plan, construction and function as a dwelling: different answers need not be rivals.